People have busy lives, but life-and-death issues are important. Japan's nuclear industry, political leadership, and bureaucracy are criminal.

Many take hints from American bravado. Militarist Bush was reelected, and now honorably retired. Lance Armstrong brazenly defrauded the world, yet is still richly celebrated. Stupidity brings fame as funny media entertainment. We cannot allow deceit to flourish, and devious people to feel there are no consequences...

PS - The above scandalous stories are merely the tip of a polluted frozen block of waste, as discharged from passenger plane toilets. Corporate scum such as Lance Armstrong & Bernie Madoff ride free for many years -- most weasels never unmasked. We commoners pay!

I like big business for economies-of-scale and efficiency. Big corporations also provide wealth & can counter public sector corruption when they choose to do so.

But there's no good reason mega-corporations should create and fine-tune major global trade agreements which will tie our hands and change our lives. Our governments are corrupted to communicate with corporations but not the citizenry.

Discussions have been kept secret from public scrutiny.

The projects should be trashed.

NO to TPP
Trans-Pacific Partnership

NO to TTIP
Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership

NO to TISA
Trade in Services Agreement
(abandoned already by Singapore & Uruguay)

Sunday, September 13, 2015

I feel continuing pain from Japanese bureaucracy's presumption: backed by law, it's essential we satisfy their demands. They extract huge energies... imagine swimming with a backpack heavy with regulations &
administrative documents. Or a competitive cyclist towing two
administrators.

Officials are doing their jobs to gather information, data, license fees, receipts, etc., but huge bureaucracy has great cost. It's wrong when public servants stop being support staff. It's wrong when government employees become self-serving parasites forcing the public to work for them. It's dangerous when bureaucrats operate secretly, controlling the public "for our own good"... (Big players in Japan, China, and Korea learn how money can navigate the bureaucracy, which by definition invites corruption).

Prof. Sadako Ogata served 10 years as U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (and another nine years as Japan International Cooperation Agency, JICA President) doing huge good around the globe. But Prof. Ogata totally failed making much political impression at home in Japan -- where foreigners are devils.

The United Nations General Assembly yesterday voted overwhelmingly to support flying the flag of Palestine at the United Nations. The State of Palestine has been a UN non-member observer State since 29 November 2012. The Vatican flag will now also be flown at the UN as the only other non-member observer State.

Marginalization & demonization of Palestine, Israel, and their neighbors nonetheless continues. The people of Palestine have suffered encroachment for many decades by state-sponsored settlers from the State of Israel. This extra-territorial "settlement process" has become highly controversial. Many inside Israel don't support the long-term strategy seeking to enlarge the Israeli state, as the often violent processes have led to assorted forms of global isolation. Israeli right-wing political leaders have sought to keep state borders nebulous, though this keeps Israel's "recognized territory" in an odd status, distinct from conquered lands and annexed regions.

Remaining marginalized people include those in Taiwan. Are they properly represented at the UN by the PRC government of Beijing?

Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Japan's bureaucracy is very costly. It creates jobs, and survives for its self-reinforcing
audit functions. But bureaucracy is typically inhospitable.

First experience of Japan for most visitors is the rat
maze at Narita airport, briskly processed by dutiful officials. Arriving visitors
to Japan must fill-in by
hand multiple immigration and customs forms, although traveler details are
already within electronic databases (in contrast, when traveling to Sweden there's no such paperwork). Travelers arriving in Japan have photo & fingerprints taken
after passport scan --for many, this is
their first fingerprinting experience (uncomfortably, data is then shared among
global intelligence agencies). The overall experience is bureaucratic and not
welcoming!

Bureaucracy maintains the right to assert itself into every transaction under the rubric of
either audit or security ("protecting taxpayer money" for public-funded expenses). We expect consistency, so discourage public officials from being individually imaginative; most have little time and no investigation budgets. They attack low-hanging fruit lacking defenses. Tiny operations are crucified and closed, while monsters roam free. This happens everywhere. The US Justice Department found huge big business corruption fueling the 2008 financial crisis: but failed to prosecute individual major criminals. Government levied billions of dollars in corporate penalties, but while the amounts collected seem large, the bureaucracy recruited to protect us costs more.

Japan's army of officials looks at other nations such as the USA or South Korea and judges Japan not highly unusual or demanding, but they typically misread the situation. Operations should be compared to best practices, not merely aspiring to average-level annoyance. And someone must ask if the project and data collected are truly important, rather than simply confirming data is entered in each & every
question box.

Summary justice by media can be costly & deadly as the public is played for chumps in the same way Saddam Hussein's Iraq directly threatened the USA with (bullshit) "weapons of mass destruction"... Those who see New England Patriots football quarterback Tom Brady only as a hated competitor should recognize that big mouth right-wing Fox kangaroo courts are an American menace.

Some top excerpts from Parry:
"it's increasingly rare when a powerful institution protects an
individual from unfair and abusive treatment by another powerful
institution"

"Considering how much ink and time were devoted to this overblown
Deflategate "scandal" there was almost no serious examination of the
actual evidence. Yet, here was the NFL, an institution with
arguably as much integrity as the tobacco industry in how they deal with
facts. The NFL has covered up the risks of concussions much as the
cigarette makers hid the cancer implications of smoking. Why would
anyone trust the NFL about anything?"

"Over the years, again and again, I have seen not only large institutions
lie but the media side with those powers-that-be even when the
institutions have a long record of dishonesty and high-handedness."

"in this rare case – at least rare in my recent experience – Judge Berman
looked at the NFL’s accusations and evidence with an objective eye –
and sided with an individual against an arrogant and powerful
institution."

Thursday, September 03, 2015

Refugees from the Middle East & Africa continue to leave their war-torn homelands and pour into Europe.

Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron sees refugees merely as "a swarm of people" (link) rather than war-displaced, desperate families -- rousted from their homes by his own nation's imperialist interventions and overseas military operations.

Blame arms makers & Bush, Cheney, Blair, Obama, & Netanyahu.

Militarists threaten and attack governments they don't like, seeking to "bomb them back to the Stone Age"...

Our violence doesn't work. We continue to pay for our Big Nasty Imperial military and its destabilizing aftermath and consequences. We created hugely expensive suffering. Don't forget the USA at some time was funding Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the mujaheddin and Taliban, ISIL / ISIS fighters, the Khmer Rouge, etc. We've poured money into the military-led oppression of Egypt's General el Sisi and other brutal regimes. Our meddling and our continuing military occupations destabilize nations and harm uncounted innocent people.

Military aggression causes too much human misery, and cripples the world with millions of refugees. We need investment in strategy & diplomacy. Bring our troops home now!